GM&O's Wood chip hoppers were indeed black. Both the purpose-built chip cars and the ones converted from older coal hoppers. I never saw or heard of one painted in brown color. The model car in the photo may have been weathered to show some rusty color that gives actual cars a brownish tint over the years.
I have always thought over the years that any creative model company would have been smart to "re-purpose" some of their nice large open hoppers to chip cars. This could very easily be done by painting the big hoppers as chip cars and adding a tan chip load. This could be done with the MTH "coke" hoppers, the Weaver big high side coal hoppers (who owns these molds now?) and the Lionel's big O-scale coal hoppers. Why don't they think of these simple ideas to repurpose nice cars to chip hoppers? MTH's actual chip car was really a gondola without dump bays or hatches on the underside, and there were very few or any of these cars in the south that I know of. But many RR's ran lots of chip "hoppers" in many versions. MTH should re-purpose their very nice high-side coke hoppers to chip hoppers and come out with a whole new car which would probably be popular with us modelers.
